The 2022-2023 Film Journal Entry #48: "Polite Society"

The 2022-2023 Film Journal Entry #48: "Polite Society"

The 2022-2023 Film Journal Entry #48

By Xavier E. Palacios

"Polite Society"

3 out of 5

Directed by Nida Manzoor

Rated PG-13

Aspiring stunt performer, the British-Pakistani teenager Ria Khan, uses all her martial arts skills, unbridled determination, and good friends to stop Lena, her dear and downtrodden older sister who is a failing artist, from marrying Salim, a seemingly perfect upper class doctor whom, along with his dotting mother, Raheela, Ria is convinced is using her sister for diabolical purposes.

Alas, every cinematic year, there seems to always be one film that completely looks to be my cup of tea and ends up just not inspiring me. Polite Society looked tailor made for my tastes. Directed by and starring South Asian women; an oddball youth as the protagonist; martial arts action; a drama anyone can relate to; and a sincere but unserious tone solely because cinema is a garbage medium so we should all have fun. Plus, the idea of seeing kung fu fight scenes with gorgeous South Asian wedding dresses sounded absolutely dope. Unfortunately, in practice, Polite Society did not do much for me.

The characters and their performers are admirable. The filmmaking is solid. I dig how there are just insane martial arts fight scenes that are treated as a matter of course when, in the real world, they would be treated as catastrophic events. The twist in the third act is absolutely bonkers, cleverly set-up, and original. There are a few jokes here and there that made me chuckle. I very much love why the story unfolds in the first place.

Ria wants to be stunt performer, doing everything she can to practice and achieve her dreams. Sadly, she is mostly failing. Ria looks up to Lena, her elder sister, and believes if she can achieve what she wants in life, so can she. Yet Lena has dropped out of art school, finds she cannot paint anymore, and doubts herself so much that when the incredibly handsome, supremely well-to-do, and pretty much perfect Salim comes along, she falls head over heels for him and quits on her own aspirations. Ria works throughout the entire film to get Lena to break off the relationship and, as is her pattern, routinely fails. I love the moral debate her quest raises. Is Ria trying to stop Lena from living the life she wants for her sister's sake or for hers, so she does not lose her best friend in this world? When should Ria let Lena decide her own life's course and when should she give her sister the metaphorical kick-in-the-pants she needs? These are empathetic questions that I did not expect the film to tackle.

However, when all is said and done, and I am certainly happy the piece has succeeded for others because the filmmakers deserve such triumph, Polite Society comes out to be just average for me without much to write home about. Nothing in the piece is remarkable. The jokes often fall flat. The martial arts action is unimpressive and nowhere near as bombastic as I hoped, though the nakedly obvious shot reference to The Matrix was fun. The twist is wonderfully crazy but perhaps robs the inherent power of Ria's conflict. I do not feel Lena's story concludes as satisfactorily as I wanted. Indeed, much of the film's storytelling feels very predictable. The dance scene is neat but, considering the trailers, I kept expecting a whole battle scene at the wedding reminiscent of the "Two vs. One Hundred" scene from Drunken Master II.

The film came and went with leaving an impression on me, and that is a disappointment. I very much wanted to celebrate this flick. Yet I have absolutely no ill will towards the piece because, unlike 2023's disappointments from Hollywood studios, I know that Polite Society does not work for me simply because the flick did not click with me as I would have liked, and for no other reason. To see such a result from a big budget film, particularly those I looked forward to, is to realize I have been conned by wealthy jerks into checking out the legendary Esquilax: a horse with the head of a rabbit and the body of a rabbit. But when a film clearly made by real people fails to work for me, so long as there is no bad blood between us, I metaphorically shake hands with the creators and leave the tale with content. The lesson to be learned: when humans make films, life keeps going along happily, and that is good.